{"id":1674,"date":"2016-05-25T09:54:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T16:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-moneyball-the-art-of-winning-an-unfair-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/25\/review-moneyball-the-art-of-winning-an-unfair-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Moneyball:<\/a>
\n Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game<\/a> by Michael Lewis<\/a>
\n My rating: 5 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been a baseball outsider\u2014did not play it in my youth, was not a fan of any professional teams, did not tune in to the world series, ever. I attended a few Wichita Aeros<\/a> games as a kid, but I never sat through an entire inning. And as I grew up, I came to identify baseball with a kind of elitism. I\u2019ll be honest- I came to view baseball players and their fans as a bunch of good-old-boys, derisive of anything that didn\u2019t fit their subjective view of \u201cAmerican,\u201d conservative to the core. (Yeah, I got issues, I should see a shrink.)<\/p>\n

But now I live in Seattle, and there\u2019s this pro team here, and I got civic pride. Usually, I follow the Mariners closely until about the middle of May, and then I give up. This year is different, and I\u2019ll cop to being a fair-weather fan. As I write this, they\u2019re first in the AL West, their best start since 2003.<\/p>\n

I’m older now and try to be a little less judgey, and I\u2019ve come to find most ball players and their fans are not so bad. Nevertheless, I still feel like an outsider. Moneyball<\/em> is a book for baseball outsiders. On the one hand, it caters to a point of view that, allegedly, baseball traditionalists hate. On the other hand, it\u2019s a shortcut to a quicker understanding of what\u2019s going on, out there on the diamond. My mistake was treating baseball as a game. Baseball is a season<\/em>. Moneyball reinforces the idea that it\u2019s not one game of nine innings, but an entire season of 162 games that has meaning.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s maybe an oblique way to put it, but you either like number crunching or you don\u2019t. If you do, you\u2019re going to love this book. If you don\u2019t care for numbers, don\u2019t worry: Michael Lewis also tells a story, about the Oakland As and Billy Beane. And that\u2019s where \u201cbaseball is a season\u201d comes in, because if you want to like baseball, as an outsider, you have to get used to the idea that it takes an entire season to tell a team\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with enjoying any one game. Grab a beer and your transistor radio, or head out to the park and munch peanuts in your seats on the third-base line. You can even have fun without knowing a darn thing about baseball. In years past, I\u2019ve done exactly that.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m a nerd, and Moneyball<\/em> spoke to me. It told me that being a baseball outsider provides a unique perspective. If I could go back in time and become a baseball insider, just to be a better fan for the Mariners now, I wouldn\u2019t do it. Moneyball<\/em>\u2019s approach, the way it\u2019s introduced me to in-depth baseball, fits my personality much better.<\/p>\n

Short version of the above: do you hate baseball? Ask yourself if what you actually hate is baseball people. Because the story of baseball from April to October is beautiful.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis My rating: 5 of 5 stars I\u2019ve always been a baseball outsider\u2014did not play it in my youth, was not a fan of any professional teams, did not tune in to the world series, ever. I attended a few Wichita Aeros games as a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-r0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}